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to TRIM or not to TRIM?

kirkbross

kirkbross

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 6, 2007
666
22
Los Angeles
I'm running Lion 10.7.4 on a Vertex 2 in a Mac Pro 3,1. The drive is about half full.

All is well and I never enabled TRIM using that enabler app or via terminal commands.

Should I bother to enable TRIM?

My fear is that my currently stable system will suddenly become glitchy.
 
kirkbross said:
I'm running Lion 10.7.4 on a Vertex 2 in a Mac Pro 3,1. The drive is about half full.

All is well and I never enabled TRIM using that enabler app or via terminal commands.

Should I bother to enable TRIM?

My fear is that my currently stable system will suddenly become glitchy.
Click to expand...

It's generally advised that SSDs with built in garbage collection, such as drives using SandForce controllers, do not run the TRIM enabler.

So I wouldn't enable TRIM on your Vertex 2.
 
prisstratton said:
My opinion is, if Apple enables Trim, then why wouldn't I enable Trim.

Here is the procedure I used:

http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

I installed an Intel 520 SSD in my 2011 MBP and enabled Trim and everything is working just fine.

You will get a load of opinions when you ask questions like this........I am not sure that anyone has a clear cut definitive answer.
Click to expand...
I'm installing an SSD for a friend, a Vertex 3 and installing Lion. I think because I have not had any issues without TRIM on my Vertex 2, I'll probably just leave it disabled on the Vertex 3.

I'm just a little leery of patching deep system files via terminal commands, even though I'm sure it would be fine.
 
Hi, I understand your hesitation and please, only do anything that you feel comfortable with.

The patch I showed you does not employ any old .kexts that some other patches used, it merely says to the system that, "I am an Apple drive" and therefore Trim can be enabled.

Although, if you are supporting someone and their computer then this "patch" would require you to intervene anytime there is an update (depending on the skill level of the individual).
 
Sure, why not? That's my stance on it. I actually just got the gist of TRIM a couple weeks ago and it seemed to be a good thing to have. I think it'll probably fix the issue on my crucial m4 ssd where it would display an erroneous freespace after I've deleted a massive file(s). I always need to boot into recovery and repair the disk to fix it.
 
Trim is only useful if you're doing heavy write operations on the drive like installing huge programs, heavy downloading/torrenting or if you have the urge to reindex your spotlight every day or so. Otherwise, the internal garbage cleaning of your SSD is sufficient for everyday use.
 
prisstratton said:
My opinion is, if Apple enables Trim, then why wouldn't I enable Trim.
Click to expand...

Conversely, if apple doesn't enable trim on third party drives, why should you enable trim?

Some drives have built in GC...


Turning it on, on your device just because "apple does it on theirs' without checking to see whether your hardware will work properly with it isn't necessarily wise.
 
kirkbross said:
I'm running Lion 10.7.4 on a Vertex 2 in a Mac Pro 3,1. The drive is about half full.

All is well and I never enabled TRIM using that enabler app or via terminal commands.

Should I bother to enable TRIM?

My fear is that my currently stable system will suddenly become glitchy.
Click to expand...

Yes you should, go over to anandtech.com. They have a nice little article as to why TRIM is very important to SSD health and speeds.
 
throAU said:
Conversely, if apple doesn't enable trim on third party drives, why should you enable trim?
Click to expand...

Because Apple is known for being an ass and trying to push people to buy upgrades from them? Apple doesn't want you to install a third party SSD, that's why.

Some drives have built in GC...
Click to expand...

All SSDs do garbage collection. Some are just more aggressive than others.

Turning it on, on your device just because "apple does it on theirs' without checking to see whether your hardware will work properly with it isn't necessarily wise.
Click to expand...

All modern SSDs support TRIM and have supported for a couple of years now. No need to worry unless you have a very old SSD, in which case you should consider buying a new one anyway.
 
Hellhammer said:
Because Apple is known for being an ass and trying to push people to buy upgrades from them? Apple doesn't want you to install a third party SSD, that's why.
Click to expand...


I edited my post.

Sure, this is true.

There is also instances of TRIM not working and causing problems on some drives. Some drives do it internally.

This would also be why apple do not enable trim by default on drives they have not supplied.


Linus, whilst discussing trim support for Linux, which is open source and has no agenda, had a big discussion regarding whether or not to turn trim support on in the kernel, and it was not as simple as "yeah, we'll enable it" because of the potential issues it can cause.
 
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